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For those that use PFPX, I have placed our fleet and flight plan templates in the downloads section of the site.
Mike
I finally purchased PFPX/TOPCAT tonight. I noticed there is a VA login system that we aren’t a part of. Is that something worth looking into?
John,
Possibly. I’ll look into it a bit more and see what’s required or what the benefit would be.
If it’s loading a daily flight schedule that might be a bit much to have 500+ flight segments in the system every day.
Will advise when I know more.
Mike
Have you ever thought about implementing company routes for the FMC? It looks like there are some good tools for managing and exporting them.
Now and then I think about it.
I’m not really a fan of stored company routes since that implies that a flight will fly the exact same route every day regardless of winds, weather, ATC etc., and obviously that’s not the case.
To make something like that even remotely feasible, we’d have to have multiple routes between every city pair and it wouldn’t work at all for the North Atlantic.
In my mind, the complexity of managing such a task would quickly outweigh any benefit.
I always feel it’s best to plan the route based on the “right now” weather conditions and ATC constraints in which I would be flying.
Having said all that, which tools are you looking at? 🙂
Mike
I’d always understood company routes to be a rather large database with multiple routings used as required for weather and ATC. I’ve also understood them to be a tool in the bag, not the bag of tools itself. Sort of a quick and dirty way to shave time for the dispatcher and the pilot when conditions afford it.
The tools I’ve been looking at all surround the Route Database. One of the biggest hurdles I always saw in the past was the inability to verify routes after each AIRAC cycle automatically, something that PFPX does. Now, how often and how many become invalid every 56 days I wouldn’t know off hand. I know the creation phase would be somewhat time-consuming, but I know the KMCI originating routes that shipped with PFPX are all still valid having been created in 2013 (except for two to Europe).
I’ve never been completely familiar with the when and how of company routes, other than knowing most transport category aircraft have had the functionality for a few decades. I’m not even sure if real-world operators are even still bothering with the system. I have a feeling, and you would know better on this, that company routes databases likely are more utilized on domestic operations where there’s a finite number of routing changes between pairs, especially short routes. For KMCI-KMDW, FlightAware, for instance, shows 8 different routes used in the last week, one that was used 51 times, seven of which were used only once, and of those seven used once, only one of which looks like a canned route “ROYAL9 TONCE ENNZO ENDEE4”. The rest utilized various RNAV fixes to start the route (e.g. BQS263022). The one used 51 times is already a default in the PFPX route database and is still valid, and that is “ROYAL9 ARENZ DCT IRK ENDEE4”.
FlightAware’s IFR Route Analyzer would be a quick and dirty way to create routes between pairs as it sorts them by most used. In playing with it, I just enter in the airports in their fields then copy and paste the route from FlighAware. It automatically names them when you save (KMCIKDFW01, KMCIKDFW02, etc).
I’ve just always seen it as a touch of realism (provided real-world airlines still bother with it). I’m just not sure, like you, if it would be too much headache for the benefit. The initial creation could at least be sped up if we had enough people with PFPX who could just take a chunk of the data as the files are saved per route, not as one database file.
Have you ever thought about implementing company routes for the FMC?
So, I think I may have misunderstood your original post.
After re-reading this I believe you’re referring to a database of company routes to be used by the FLIGHT PLANNING SYSTEM (PFPX) for planning and subsequent export for FMC uplink.
Real world FMC’s just don’t have the memory to store thousands of routes and are typically uplinked during preflight.
Our real world flight planning system DOES contain stored routes between all of our domestic city pairs, some pairs more than others. So in that context, YES, I have thought about a MidCon company route database for PFPX, but as of now haven’t really started putting anything together.
MC
It sounds that I’m the one misunderstanding. My real-world experience is very much GA as a pilot and Part 135 as a mechanic, so the workings of FMC systems is limited to what I’ve gleaned from flight simming over the last two decades. I know the Garmin 430s I’m used to as both a pilot and mechanic are very limited in their memory, so it only mildly surprises me that FMCs on transport category aircraft have similarly crappy storage capabilities
To clarify, I’d like to enter a company route in the Route page in the CDU, in whichever way that is realistically implemented. From what you’ve said, it sounds like it’s less a stored database on the aircraft than it’s an uplink during preflight. I always wondered since it’s often in the format of MCIMDW01, MCIMDW02, etc.
Whether stored in the FMC or uplinked, I believe PFPX can manage the database of routes when the navdata changes.
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